Indeed. But that reasoning assumes that the enemy is going to turn out to be who you expect, and is going to fight in the way you expect, and that you will always have a fleet operating together. All of which turned out to be untrue, the first two points being demonstrated first by the Falklands (with Iraq next up), with the last being obvious in many minor single-ship operations ever since.
Yes, the fully-capable ASW/AAW ships would be big and expensive, so there wouldn't be many of them. But in my proposal, the numbers are restored by the smaller and cheaper frigate, in a high/low mix rather than an AAW/ASW mix. That way, every ship would have a general-purpose capability so could operate alone as required (with the frigates being sent on the less dangerous missions).
That's true, although the first prototype system emerged in 1973 and (as history showed) it was easy to bolt on to an existing ship, so it didn't have to be taken account of in the design. Anyway, Sea Wolf was known about - and the ships in my scenario could have had that.
Judging by the time taken in getting the T22 and T42 into service, which led to the RN buying the off-the-shelf T21, the British warship design industry was fully stretched at the time, so working on separate commercial proposals may have been difficult. Anyway, the fact remains that the RN-specified T22 and T42 were unattractive to foreign buyers, with one minor exception. So the lack of overseas sales of the RN warship classes can be attributed to them being overspecialised to meet the RN's needs (and maybe too expensive as a result).
Of course. But as I keep pointing out, had the Spey been chosen at the start instead of the Olympus and Tyne followed by the Spey, the Spey would have remained in service with two generations of warships - until the T45 and T26.
